Eugene H. Peterson Quotes
-
If we get our information from the biblical material there is no doubt that the Christian life is a dancing, leaping, daring life.
-
Pity can be nearsighted and condescending; shared suffering can be dignifying and life-changing.
-
When we submit our lives to what we read in scripture, we find that we are not being led to see God in our stories but our stories in God's. God is the larger context and plot in which our stories find themselves.
-
Count yourself lucky, how happy you must be - you get a fresh start, your slate's wiped clean. Count yourself lucky - God holds nothing against you and you're holding nothing back from Him.
-
We've all met a certain type of spiritual person. She's a wonderful person. She loves the Lord. She prays and reads the Bible all the time. But all she thinks about is herself. She's not a selfish person. But she's always at the center of everything she's doing.
-
Worship is an act that develops feelings for God, not a feeling for God that is expressed in an act of worship.
-
The most important thing a pastor does is stand in a pulpit every Sunday and say, 'Let us worship God.' If that ceases to be the primary thing I do in terms of my energy, my imagination, and the way I structure my life, then I no longer function as a pastor.
-
The life of faith is a daily exploration of the constant and countless ways in which Gods grace and love are expereinced.
-
God is the larger context and plot in which our stories find themselves.
-
Real faith is refined in the fires and storms of pain.
-
Isn't it interesting that all of the biblical prophets and psalmists were poets?
-
The role of the pastor is to embody the gospel. And of course to get it embodied, which you can only do with individuals, not in the abstract.
-
Pastors are highly susceptible to the sin of sloth.
-
Prayer is the disciplined refusal to act before God acts.
-
If you keep the Sabbath, you start to see creation not as somewhere to get away from your ordinary life, but a place to frame an attentiveness to your life.
-
There is nothing terribly difficult in the Bible - at least in a technical way. The Bible is written in street language, common language. Most of it was oral and spoken to illiterate people. They were the first ones to receive it. So when we make everything academic, we lose something.
-
People learn to shop for churches; there is no loyalty to the church. They're consumers being attracted to one product or another. I think it's sacrilege, to tell you the truth, it really is.
-
I get asked, 'What do you miss most about being a pastor?' I think it's the intimacy, the incredible gift of intimacy. You go through death with somebody, with their families, and there's an intimacy that comes through that that is just incomparable.
-
It is not easy to convey a sense of wonder, let alone resurrection wonder, to another. It’s the very nature of wonder to catch us off guard, to circumvent expectations and assumptions. Wonder can’t be packaged, and it can’t be worked up. It requires some sense of being there and some sense of engagement.
-
When you are part of a megachurch you have no responsibility to anybody else.
-
Stories are verbal acts of hospitality.
-
It's essential for us to develop an imagination that is participatory. Art is the primary way in which this happens. It's the primary way in which we become what we see or hear.
-
Sabbath is that uncluttered time and space in which we can distance ourselves from our own activities enough to see what God is doing.
-
That's the whole spiritual life. It's learning how to die. And as you learn how to die, you start losing all your illusions, and you start being capable now of true intimacy and love.